by Neil Postman
Of fascism we may say it has not yet had its final hour. It lingers here and there, though hardly as a story worth telling. Where it still exists, people do not believe in it, they endure it. And so, Francis Fukuyama tells us in The End of History, the great narrative of liberal democracy has triumphed at last and brings an end to history’s dialectic. Which is why so many people look to America with anxious eyes to see if its gods may serve them as well.
So far, America’s answer has largely been, Believe in a market economy, which is not much of a story, not much of an answer. The problem is that America’s better gods have been badly wounded. As America has moved toward the status of an empire (known today, with moral ambiguity, maybe even irony, as the world’s only “superpower”), its great story of liberal democracy has lost much of its luster. Of Tocqueville’s “civic participation,” there is less in America than in any other industrialized nation. Half of America’s eligible voters do not take the trouble to go to the polls in presidential elections, and many who do form their opinions by watching, leaden-eyed, television campaign commercials. It would be frightening to contemplate how few know the names of their representatives in Congress, or who is the secretary of state, or how many even know that there is such a cabinet post. Some of this civic indifference is doubtless connected to the cynicism generated by the crude fabrications of recent American leaders, especially Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the latter of whom made the term cover-up commonplace in political discourse. Moreover, the idea that America, through an enlightened foreign policy, may serve as a moral light unto nations was dimmed, to say the least, in the jungles of Vietnam, and then made ridiculous in Granada, Panama, and Kuwait. Could Marx have had something like this in mind when he said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce?
I do not say the idea of America as a moral metaphor is dead. Were it dead, the students in Tienanmen Square would not have used the Statue of Liberty as their symbol; the students in Prague would not have surged through the streets reading aloud from the works of Thomas Jefferson; and armies of immigrants would not be landing each day at John F. Kennedy Airport yearning to breathe free. Through all the turmoil, it is well to keep in mind that a wounded god is different from a dead one. We may yet have need of this one.
Meanwhile, the narrative of the great melting-pot has also suffered as many insults as an imperfect god can bear. For some, for example, Koreans, Chinese, and Russians, it has worked tolerably well, but too many others have been blocked from sharing in the fullness of the American promise because of their race or native language. The case of African-Americans in particular is a grotesque contradiction of the romance of a blended society, all the more so because they are not immigrants at all, but as native as most Americans get. Although there has been an astonishing growth of a black middle class, which is supposed to be the test of a group’s acceptance into the mainstream, for millions of blacks the American dream is a nightmare of poverty, family disintegration, violence, and joblessness. These matters were supposed to have been addressed by a forty-year commitment to social equality, which included such amendments to the melting-pot-story as school integration, the Civil Rights Act, open admission policies, and affirmative action. And yet for all of that, blacks remain, as Ralph Ellison would say it, invisible people. On the day I am writing this, for example, Americans have been cheered by some news issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Unemployment is down, indicating the economy is on the rise and better times are ahead. Barely commented upon and of almost no interest is the fact that black unemployment has increased, as has (other figures show) black homelessness, especially among children. It is as if America wishes to proceed with its business without the inclusion of blacks. And yet, it is one of the truly remarkable (and largely ignored) facts of American culture that millions of blacks continue to believe in America’s promises and in its great narratives, perhaps more deeply than do any others.
There are, of course, other groups—Latinos, for example—who seem unable to find a welcoming place for themselves in the melting pot and who therefore find something less than inspiration in the promise embedded in its story. As for the rigorous tale of the blessedness of Hard Work, too many Americans no longer believe in it. The great school of the Higher Learning, television, teaches them that a dream deferred is a dream forever denied—which is to say, no dream at all; that they are, in fact, entitled to the fruits of technology’s largesse; and that the god of Consumership confers its graciousness more freely than can any god of Labor.
I will come to the promise of the god of Consumership in a few pages. Here it needs only to be said that in America, as elsewhere, there exists what Vaclav Havel calls “a crisis in narrative.” Old gods have fallen, either wounded or dead. New ones have been aborted. “We are looking,” he said, “for new scientific recipes, new ideologies, new control systems, new institutions.…” In other words, we seek new gods who can provide us with “an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith.”1
Havel does not underestimate the difficulties in this. He knows that skepticism, disillusionment, alienation—and all the other words we use to describe a loss of meaning—have come to characterize our age, affecting every social institution, not least the schools. Having once been president of Czechoslovakia, and having lost the Slovaks to their own gods, Havel knows, better than anyone, that the almost worldwide return to “tribalism” signifies a search to recover a source of transcendent identity and values. He also knows, as many others do, how dangerous such searches can be, which is why no one need be surprised by the rise in the West of skinheads, who have revived the symbols and programs of Nazism, or, as I write, the emerging popularity in Russia of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the “Russian Hitler,” who promises the masses a future more fully articulated than a conversion to a market economy. Zhirinovsky takes his story from hell, but we must grant him this: He knows as well as Havel that people need gods as much as food.
Neither should we be surprised that there has arisen, especially though not exclusively in American academic circles, a kind of metaphysics of meaninglessness, known popularly as the philosophy of “deconstruction.” Invented, so to say, by a reformed Nazi sympathizer, Paul de Man, deconstruction postulates that the meanings of words are always indeterminate, that words are less about reality than about other words, and that the search for definite meaning in words or anyplace else is pointless, since there is nothing to find. How he came to this conclusion is not entirely clear—perhaps he wished us to believe, by way of self-justification, that it is possible to read Mein Kampf as a paean of praise to the Jewish race.
In any case, no philosophy of deconstruction can conceal the crisis in narrative, the decline of once-sturdy gods. The carnage is painfully visible, for example, in the trivial uses to which sacred symbols are now put, especially in the United States. There can, of course, be no functioning sense of a great narrative without a measure of respect for its symbols. How are such symbols now used? Take almost any of America’s once great narratives and we can see. There is, for example, the story of our origins, summarized so eloquently in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It tells of a nation “brought forth” through revolution, destined to serve as an example to the rest of the world. This is the same Abraham Lincoln whose face is used to announce linen sales in February. Emma Lazarus’s poem celebrating an immigrant culture is lodged at the base of the Statue of Liberty. This is the same Statue of Liberty used by an airline to persuade potential customers to fly to Miami. There is the story of a God-fearing nation seeking guidance and strength from the lessons of the Old Testament and the commandments brought by Moses. This is the same Moses who is depicted in a poster selling kosher chickens. Of Christmas and the uses made of its significant symbols, the less said the better. But it probably should be noted that Hebrew National uses both Uncle Sam and God (with a capit
al G) to sell frankfurters, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is largely used as an occasion for furniture sales, and the infant Jesus and Mary have been invoked to promote VH-1, a rock-music television station.
It is difficult to say if this erosion of symbols, this obliteration of the difference between the sacred and the profane, is the effect or the cause of a crisis in narrative. Mostly, I would say, the effect (although effects quickly become causes in these matters). Whichever the case, we are led to conclude that it is not a good time for gods and their symbols, and is therefore a bad time for social institutions that draw their power from metaphysical sources. This leads us at last to the question, What does all this mean for the enterprise of schooling?
The answer that comes most readily and nastily to mind is that the majority of educators have ignored the question altogether. Many have focused their attention on the engineering of learning, their journals being filled with accounts of research that show this way or that to be better for teaching reading, mathematics, or social studies. The evidence for the superiority of one method over another is usually given in the language of statistics, which, in spite of its abstract nature, is strangely referred to as “hard evidence.” This gives the profession a sense of making progress, and sometimes delusions of grandeur. I recently read an article in The American Educator in which the author claims that teaching methods based on research in cognitive science are “the educational equivalents of polio vaccine and penicillin.”2
From what diseases cognitive science will protect our students is not entirely clear. But in fact, it does not matter. The educational landscape is flooded with similar claims of the miracles that will flow from computer science, school choice, teacher accountability, national standards of student assessment, and whole-language learning. Why not cognitive science, as well?
There was a time when educators became famous for providing reasons for learning; now they become famous for inventing a method.
There are, of course, many things wrong with all of this, not least that it diverts attention from important matters—for example, the fundamental simplicity of teaching and learning when both teacher and student share a reason for the enterprise. As Theodore Roszak has written: “Too much apparatus, like too much bureaucracy, only inhibits the natural flow [of teaching and learning]. Free human dialogue, wandering wherever the agility of the mind allows, lies at the heart of education. If teachers do not have the time, the incentive, or the wit to provide that; if students are too demoralized, bored or distracted to muster the attention their teachers need of them, then that is the educational problem which has to be solved—and solved from inside the experience of the teachers and the students.”3
That problem, as I have been saying, is metaphysical in nature, not technical. And it is sad that so many of our best minds in education do not acknowledge this. But, of course, some do, and it is neither fair nor accurate to say that educators have been entirely indifferent to the metaphysics of schooling. The truth is that school cannot exist without some reason for its being, and in fact there are several gods our students are presently asked to serve. It will take the rest of this chapter and all of the next for me to describe them and to show why each is incapable of sustaining, with richness, seriousness, and durability, the idea of a public school.
As it happens, the first narrative consists of such an uninspiring set of assumptions that it is hardly noticed as a narrative at all. But we may count it as one, largely because so many believe it to be the preeminent reason for schooling. It may properly go by the name of the god of Economic Utility. As its name suggests, it is a passionless god, cold and severe. But it makes a promise, and not a trivial one. Addressing the young, it offers a covenant of sorts with them: If you will pay attention in school, and do your homework, and score well on tests, and behave yourself, you will be rewarded with a well-paying job when you are done. Its driving idea is that the purpose of schooling is to prepare children for competent entry into the economic life of a community. It follows from this that any school activity not designed to further this end is seen as a frill or an ornament—which is to say, a waste of valuable time.
The origins of this worldview are traceable to several traditions, beginning, obviously, with the never-ending struggle to provide ourselves with material sustenance. People need to eat. Nothing could be plainer than that. What are schools for—what is anything for—if not to provide us with the means to earn our bread? But there is more to it than this. The god of Economic Utility is not entirely without a spiritual glow, dim as that might be. It does, in fact, tell a story of sorts, parts of which can be found in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, in the tale of the Protestant ethic, and even in the writings of Karl Marx. The story tells us that we are first and foremost economic creatures, and that our sense of worth and purpose is to be found in our capacity to secure material benefits. This is one reason why the schooling of women, until recently, was not considered of high value. According to this god, you are what you do for a living—a rather problematic conception of human nature even if one could be assured of a stimulating and bountiful job. Nonetheless, that assurance is given through a clear delineation of good and evil. Goodness inheres in productivity, efficiency, and organization; evil in inefficiency and sloth. Like any self-respecting god, this one withholds its favor from those who are evil and bestows it abundantly on those who are good.
The story goes on to preach that America is not so much a culture as it is an economy, and that the vitality of any nation’s economy rests on high standards of achievement and rigorous discipline in schools. There is little evidence (that is to say, none) that the productivity of a nation’s economy is related to the quality of its schooling.4 But every god has unsubstantiated axioms, and most people are content to let this one go unexamined. Those who believe in it are inclined to compare the achievements of American schoolchildren with those of children from other countries. The idea is to show that the Americans do not do as well in certain key subjects, thus accounting for failures in American productivity. There are several problems with this logic, among them the difficulties in comparing groups that differ greatly in their traditions, language, values, and general orientation to the world. Another is that even if it can be shown that American students are inferior in some respects—let us say in mathematics and reading—to students in certain other countries, those countries do not uniformly have higher standards of economic productivity than America. Since 1970, the U.S. economy has generated 41 million new jobs. By contrast, the entire European Union, whose population is close to one-third larger than that of the United States, has created only 8 million new jobs. And all this has occurred during a period when American students have performed less well than European students.5 Moreover, it can be rather easily shown from an historical perspective that during periods of high economic productivity in America, levels of educational achievement were not especially high.
The whole business is, to say the least, problematic, and most industrial nations give no credence to it. That is why, for example, the Germans and Japanese are opening huge automobile plants in America, and in states not famous for the excellence of their educational systems. Even if one argued that such investments are made because labor is cheaper in America, companies like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Honda would surely not proceed with billion-dollar investments if they believed the inferior education of Americans prevented them from producing automobiles of competitive quality.
One need hardly add that the story of the god of Economic Utility is rarely believed by students and certainly has almost no power to inspire them. Generally, young people have too much curiosity about the world and far too much vitality to be attracted to an idea that reduces them to a single dimension. I did know a youngster once—he was in the second grade—who, upon being asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, answered without hesitation, “An orthodontist.” It is hard to imagine a more depressing answer. It is unnatural for children to regard themselv
es as economic units except under extreme circumstances, and probably not even then. Nonetheless, since his parents had clearly put that idea into his head, I assume they would have approved. Many parents, in fact, are apt to like the idea of school as a primary training ground for future employment, as do many corporate executives. This is why the story of Economic Utility is told and retold in television commercials and political speeches as the reason why children should go to school, and stay in school, and why schools should receive public support.
But for all its widespread popularity, the god of Economic Utility is impotent to create satisfactory reasons for schooling. Putting aside its assumption that education and productivity go hand in hand, its promise of providing interesting employment is, like the rest of it, overdrawn. There is no strong evidence for believing that well-paying, stimulating jobs will be available to most students upon graduation. Since 1980, in America at least, the largest increase in jobs has been for those with relatively low skills—for example, waiters, porters, salespeople, taxi drivers. I mean no disrespect to those who do these jobs competently, but their skills are hardly so complex that the schools must be preoccupied with teaching them. In fact, almost anything the schools might teach would be suitable for preparing the young for such work. Of course, well-paying, highly competitive jobs will be available, as always, to those with a high degree of competence in the uses of language. But no serious argument can be made, not even by orthodontists, that the sole reason why language competence is useful is to ensure entry into a privileged profession. Even if such a proposition were put forward, we would not know which professions our students might aspire to, and therefore we would not know what specialized competence they would require. If we knew, for example, that all our students wished to be corporate executives, would we train them to be good readers of memos, quarterly reports, and stock quotations, and not bother their heads with poetry, science, history? I think not. Everyone who thinks, thinks not. Specialized competence can come only through a more generalized competence, which is to say that economic utility is a by-product of a good education. Any education that is mainly about economic utility is far too limited to be useful, and, in any case, so diminishes the world that it mocks one’s humanity. At the very least, it diminishes the idea of what a good learner is.
